WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday met the wife and daughter of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died last week, "to express his heartfelt condolences", the White House said.
During the meeting in California, Biden expressed his admiration for Navalny's "extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone", the White House said in a statement.
Biden also affirmed that the United States will announce major new sanctions against Russia on Friday in response to Navalny's death, Russia's repression and aggression and its war in Ukraine, it added.
The latest punitive measures will target a range of items, including the country's defense and industrial bases, along with sources of revenue for the economy, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan had previously said.
Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died suddenly on Friday after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" penal colony above the Arctic Circle where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Trevor Hunnicutt, editing by David Ljunggren)
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